Paperback 951: Pocket Books 490 (3rd ptg, 1948)

Title: Skin and Bones
Author: Thorne Smith
Cover artist (and illus.): [Herbert Roese]

Estimated value: $not a lot
Condition: 3/10

Best things about this cover:

• Dang. I'm sure there's an innocent enough explanation for whatever is happening here, but for a late '40s cover, this is pretty ... saucy. It's like she's looking over her shoulder going, "Well, get on with it, then..." and he's trying to figure out how one removes these bloody stocking contraptions.
• I love that when I was tagging this post, the category of "all fours" already existed.
• Thorne Smith was a very big deal in the mid-century "humor" game.

Best things about this back cover:

• Frankly, this sounds amazing.
• "Hoarse, gamy laughter" is what I just emitted upon reading that phrase.
• I never noticed that the kangaroo, in this incarnation of the Pocket Books logo, kinda looks like he (!?) has a giant book erection.

Page 123~

"Sure," said the drunken mortician, growing a little tired of the Rev. Watts.

~RP

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Paperback 903: Vega Books V-4 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Joy Killer
Author: Ralph Brandon
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $20 (unread / perfect condition)

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection!]

Best things about this cover:

• I think that's her underwear on the floor wax can there. I think. For their sakes, I really hope the floor wax is for the floor.
• Seaman Apprentice! Subtle.
• I can't get over the fact that together, their names make BABY KILLER.
• Once again, Vega (and Fabian, and Saber) books are the best, that is, the worst, in a good way. God bless Sanford Aday and his short-lived Fresno-based softcore ridicu-porn empire.

Best things about this back cover:

• That first sentence of the second paragraph makes me think the writer hasn't really mastered the art of the conjunction.
• So they're both kinky, but not in compatible ways? Am I reading that last sentence right?
• I believe that the title "Joy Killer" makes absolutely no sense. Unless there is some as-yet unmentioned character named Joy ... nope, even then, no sense.

Page 123~

"An orgy of sensual lust! Oh Killer, that sounds so exciting."
"I'm trying to help you, you depraved female. Now pay attention to what the book says."

There follows several pages of Killer reading aloud from some kind of sex-phobic sex manual for new wives, which is then followed by a marriage consummation scene in which "I plunged my throbbing masculinity into the depths of her quivering feminity [sic]."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]